Identity Crisis
What I really want to know is where he got Gandalf’s hat.
…
After a quick Google search, it appears he went straight to Weta Workshop. Yeesh, I hope he used his own cut of the loot. That hat ain’t cheap, and Thief is going to be pissed if Fighter used party funds.
Speaking for myself, multiclassing has always been a tough nut to crack. Sure there are prestige classes, and they’re cool as hell, if a bit weak mechanically. But even if I put power issues aside there’s still the big fat conceptual problem. Who wants to wait until Xth level to play a character concept? I want my guy to function as intended from level 1. Worse than that, I’ve still got to deal with the storyline consequences. No matter how well I plan out my Wizard 3/Cleric 3/Mystic Theurge 10/Wizard 4, I’ve still got to make my leveling schedule sync up with the narrative. Depending on whether or not my PC starts off as a cleric or a wizard, he’s got to experience either a surge of religious feeling or a sudden desire to study the arcane at 4th level. That’s awfully specific, and may not work in a given campaign.
GM: “You’ve bested the herd of vampire cows, and have chosen to spend the night in the barn. Actually, you guys have enough XP to level. Congrats.”
Me: “Sweet! I finally get my first level of wizard!”
GM: “So…where do you get your spellbook and familiar?”
Me: “Fuck you, that’s where.”
And I get it. You use the magic of retroactivity to say that you’ve been scribing magical formulae and spending a few minutes around the campfire each night training your pet toad or whatever, but that’s weak sauce. And thus, stymied by my own inability to apply handwavium, I soldier on with my single class builds.
How about you guys? Any especially cool multiclass ideas to recommend?
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Bard/barbarian. It’s like playing as Beowulf. Would recommend.
So you do epic things, then you sing epic songs. Fair enough. Sounds epic.
*Bardbarian
I tend to use multiclassing to better mechanically reflect some concept that doesn’t quite fit one of the single class builds, or occasionally just because a splash of a level or two can add a bit of variety and utility to a lot of builds, especially fighters. While things were a bit different in my groups last campaign (we were trying out 5th for the first time), in 3.5 probably half my builds were multiclass, and I practically always take some levels of a prestige.
Any special standouts? What was your favorite combo?
In a Pathfinder game, I was having… An interesting time… Trying to create a Gunslinger/Shaman character. Since the Wis isn’t totally wasted on Gunslinger (Providing more grit,) it should have worked on paper, but things always fell apart on the Shaman side – mostly because at a certain point it almost always became more beneficial to cast a spell than pull a trigger.
Yeah… that’s the trouble with multiclassing a caster. Always has been. :/
Maybe if you specialize in quickened spells (magical lineage, etc.) you could make the concept work in a gestalt game?
Even gestalt, it just quickly becomes an issue of ‘Well I can shoot things really hard, or I can disable everything on the map.’ So it still suffers the same basic issue, I’d think.
Yah. It’s an issue of “do I want to be a striker?” vs “do I want to be a controller?” If you’re tied to playing the optimal god wizard, then it’s a no-brainer. But if you want to RP an eldritch sheriff, then you’re occasionally allowed to make the flavorful choice. My two cents anyway.
FYI, your post has inspired me to look at gunslinger / warpriest gestalt build. Should be tasty. 🙂
I haven’t done it yet, but I wanna multiclass a Warlock/Paladin build. Fiend pact focusing on Bladelock, & a Vengeance Paladin with a mount.
…Ghost Rider. I wanna be a D&D version of Ghost Rider.
Nice! I hear that Spell Sniper is a solid method for getting attack cantrips (Booming Blade, Green Flame Blade) to work with the 10′ reach you get from a whip (read: a flaming chain).
I like the idea of a warlock/paladin or warlock/cleric with an Evil patron but a Good deity, so whenever they cast a spell they have to apologize to the other guy. “Forgive me Father, for the sin I’m about to commit. I cast Eldritch Blast.”
I currently have a dwarf paladin/bard, started as a paladin and then took a family vacation where his cousin convinced him to learn how to play an ocarina. Upon his return to adventuring he convinced his best friend the druid to take a level of bard and learn to play the lute.
You guys should form a band, buy a van, and hit the road solving mysteries together. The druid’s companion should also be a Great Dane.
I wouldn’t call it a recommendation, but one of my friends LOVES to multiclass. In one of our past games together, we were starting at level 8, and he had 5 different classes, each one with at least one archetype, sometimes 2. Our nickname for that character was his classterfuck.
Oh ima NEED some build notes. What the crap did it even do?
I find conferring with the GM beforehand about where you want your character to go can be beneficial. My own example:
I wanted my heal Druid to take Dragon Shaman so he could fast heal everyone. My druid was really shy and reserved, having been a hermit most of his life, but over levels 1 to 5 he tried to integrate with the party more, had a few traumatic experiences.
During this time, he found a Dragon Shaman’s Dragon Totem. Not knowing what it was and having had bad experiences with cursed items recently, this provided roleplay opportunity for my druid to insist this item was good and for the others to be worried about him. He kept this statuette with him and drew courage from it. Then, level 6, he realised what he was meant to do and how to harness that power, bish bash bosh, one level of dragon shaman.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, right? Much easier to hash it out ahead of time rather than trying to retroactively make your dude make sense. Well done to the both of yas!
Was just rereading some of your own posts not planning to comment, but upon seeing this one I couldn’t help myself. In 5e, I absolutely love multi classing, to the dismay of my dm. 4 of my last 6 guys have been multi classed, with 2 being in 3 different classes. My current one is a sorta gish wizard(divination) 3 /cleric(knowledge) 1, that while not really optimal, has been fun the 2 sessions I’ve been him so far. My goal with him was basically just to make the most knowledgeable character possible while still being reasonably powerful.
I was really surprised to see that one of the GMs at my FLGS took a straight-up “no multi-classing at my table” approach. I guess it’s technically optional, and that it does cut down on power gaming (if you seriously hate power gaming). But it just cuts off so many interesting avenues of progression! Your “mystic theurge” dude sounds all manner of fun.
I would consider him more gish then theurge since hes only ever getting that one cleric level, but yeah hes alot of fun, he’s also my first asshole character who isn’t evil which has been fun. I’m also apparently alot better at making up insults when not playing my normally highly good characters too, as the other people are noting that im doing way better with it now then i ever did with one of my bard or bard like guys.
The pressure is off when you’re a talented amateur rather than a dedicated professional insult comic.
I created a Monk 11/ Warlock 4 (or close) for a 5e one-shot. A bit of Great Old One Warlock really blended well to make a creepy, mind reading, glowy eyed, shadow monk.
I had to friendly him up a bit in practice though. Being dark and mysterious didn’t seem helpful in a fast team scenario.
Gotta unlonely that lone wolf sometimes. Good on you for stepping out of the brooding corner.
How is shadow monk, btw? I’m looking at monk for my next 5e dude, and I have no idea which way to take it.
At least in 5E, Ranger/Druid is always the obvious one. Shared key stats, similar fluff, major overlap in spell lists. You basically become a Nimble Druid. Druid/Monks another good one, with shared stats, shared themes of isolation and asceticism, but unless you have a rules-loose DM, the specific wording in a lot of the class features will trip you up. Here’s a pretty comprehensive guide to call the combos. http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?502248
Damn dude. That’s an excellent resource!
My last 5e multiclass was a rogue 2 / paladin X. Cunning action was the key, as it allowed me to move my auras around the battlefield to wherever they were needed most.
I got really excited to make a 5e BarBEARian (Druid 6/Barb X) and tank it up as a rageified Cave Bear (CR2), but looking ahead at our campaign, he was really a one-trick pony (pun intended) that just became really ineffective at higher levels…
For me, the holy grail of builds is finding one that does something fun, effective, and innovative at every level. If I can only hit those at level 7-10 or whatever, the build goes into the big binder o’ NPC antagonists.
This is actually some amazingly good advice and I’m really gonna have to remember it.
“Have fun now,” that’s my motto. 🙂
My sister is in the game I run, and her rogue just multiclassed into bard. We figure it makes sense from a narrative standpoint since:
1) She spent time with a band of traveling entertainers in the past,
2) She was raised by an assassin cult before running away (said cult is dedicated to a forgotten goddess of silence, so deciding to be a person who makes music is a good way to defy them),
3) She kinda sorta managed to pull off a countersong against a singing tree (I had her roll Performance and decided her roll was good enough to give the party members enchanted by the song a bonus to their wisdom saves).
I love point #3. It’s one of my favorite things when RP shenanigans get reflected by game mechanics.
Also, the bard/rogue thing can be fun from a mechanical perspective too. It may not be especially hardy, but it is one hell of a skill monkey combo!
Irlana the Hunter with 4 levels of Unchained Rogue. She is a melee BEAST! Just a few weeks ago, I killed an adult blue dragon in a single turn with her. My GM said I ‘blendered’ its head. She rides her boar into battle and her feats are focuses on flanking bonuses and generating AoOs for both her and the boar.
A few of my characters have some single level dips, like my Warpriest with a level of Shifter (he’s natural attack focused), and my bard with a starting level of Swashbuckler (to help keep her alive in melee).
The ones with the most multiclassing are where I was building a concept. My Prince Alester has one level of Inspired Blade Swashbuckler, 2 levels of Oath of the People’s Council Paladin, and the rest in Eldritch Scion Magus. Princess Tara has one level of Falcata Swashbuckler, 1 level of Bard, and the rest Vigilante. The bard level is for the flavor of her parents making her take music lessons and her sneaking out to get magic lessons from the city wizard. And finally, a Pathfinder version of DC Comics Captain Cold has his levels strictly planned out up to level 10. It starts with 2 levels of the Alchemist archetype Gun Chemist, followed by one level Musketeer Cavalier, then one level of Trench Fighter, 2 more levels of Gun Chemist, 2 levels of Phantom Thief Rogue, and finally 2 more levels of Gun Chemist. I’ll probably give him two more levels of Trench Fighter after that to get Dex to Damage with his gun. I’m currently working on the Hulk. It’s going to be Alchemist/Barbarian/Master Chymist.
For that Captain Cold PC especially, do you ever worry about the timing of the classes not making sense story-wise? I mean, if you experienced zero WWI style trench fighting in-game, do you ever have a twinge of guilt about grabbing those levels anyway?
Not one bit. I have so many characters I’ll probably never actually get to play him anyway. I just like making characters and I wanted to see if I could make one that fit the theme and worked mechanically. I tried to make the Flash, but I couldn’t figure out how to make it work.
I’ve seen a couple of good builds for Flash:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_RPG/comments/61s20u/fastest_character_possible/
Someone once suggested using Battle Dancer Brawler and a Monk archetype so I could attack multiple foes while charging. Another person suggested Dimensional Savant.
The “Roland” character I mentioned earlier, he of the bland name, was a cleric/wizard/mystic theurge/eventually some other stuff on the way to qualify for archmage. Played in a two-year campaign during the early days of 3.5. He sprang from an obsession with the Red Mage from Final Fantasy (this was before 8-Bit Theater).
Honestly, if I had a do-over I think I’d stick to single class. Roland was middle of the road at best, and died so often that there was a marut assigned to try to keep him down.
I got rather annoyed later in 3.5 when they came up with a couple of twelve-level arcane/divine prestige classes that were better all round than the mystic theurge. IIRC one was the True Necromancer or something and the other was similarly specialized, but it showed there was design space for a non-bland version of the MT.
My Pathfinder character designs did more playing with multiple compatible archetypes than with prestige classes. I worked up a snake-oil salesman for a hypothetical Old West Fantasy setting, an alchemist with I think it was Chirurgeon and Grenadier.
My favorite archetype shenanigans involved a few levels of martial artist monk into brutal pugilist barbarian. A little third party for the half-giant race, a few agreeable rulings from my GM, and suddenly I was able to bludgeon hill giants with other hill giants:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/barbarian/rage-powers/paizo-rage-powers/body-bludgeon-ex/
It’s a dumb build that doesn’t come online until 11th level, but goddamn is it funny when it works.
Most groups I’ve played with are HEAVILY into multiclassing. And if I hadn’t ended up being forever-GM’d I’d do quite a bit of multiclassing myself. Best one I ever got to actually play instead if just design was a 3.5 Ranger/Warlock. I’d originally designed the character specifically to get the Geomancer prestige class, and so he’d started as a Ranger/Sorcerer, but after talking things over with another player and a favourable ruling from the GM he swapped to Ranger/Warlock instead.
Idea was for training and self-identity he was a Ranger, but the family had some fey ancestry, and so as he grew in power, he started manifesting his eldritch heritage and those inherent powers are with him. Mechanically he was built as ‘two levels in Ranger for every one in Warlock’ until he hit the requirements for Geomancer, and his magics started warping his body with Drifts. Game went on long enough I actually got to finish out Geomancer and start going into Epic Levels. When we hit that point I mentioned to the GM that I was looking for another prestige class that was in-theme for my Ranger while letting my Warlock casting grow, and he pointed my to Dragon Magazine’s Infused prestige class. I didn’t get to go too far down it, but I did manage to win a solo-encounter with a Red Dragon when my PC was level 21 by outlasting it of all things. Turns out in 3.5 the Endurance feat is the only thing that delays the onset of non-lethal damage from exertion, so it didn’t matter the Dragon had a higher Con, the Endurance bonus feats from ranger meant he hit non-lethal and passed out from it before I did. Was doubly surprising since as a player and in-character I walked into the encounter expecting to die to buy time for villagers to flee.
Mind saving me a boatload of googling? What was your main shtick with this wombo combo? Why was it good?
Ah. Sorry for delayed reply. I hit the ‘e-mail me responses’ button but it never happened.
Basically it was all built that way because I read the 3.x Geomancer prestige class and thought it was really cool.
Cleric attack growth, d8 HD, to qualify you need both arcane and divine spells (not a whole ton, something like 1st level divine spells and 2nd level arcane – which is why I needed GM permission for 3.5 Warlock to fulfill the prereq, since normally Invocations are considered to qualify as specific spell levels for that kind of thing). Unlike Mystic Theurge it doesn’t grow both casting classes, what it does instead is it grants… Oh maybe every other level you learn more spells in one of your classes. But it let’s you use whichever class has the higher caster level for all caster level effects for spells from both classes, grants you ‘ley line attunement’ or something so you get an effective +1 or +2 in certain areas, and every level you pick a ‘drift’ which was the main thing I wanted. Oh, and it let’s you treat your any spell whose slot was half your Geomancer level or less as the other kind of spell – so arcane spells as divine for advantageous purposes (no arcane spell failure, can use divine focuses) and your divine spells as arcane for advantageous purposes (I honestly can’t remember how this was helpful, just that it was).
But the drifts, those were what I wanted. Basically there were 5 progressively powerful tiers of ‘drifts’ representing your growing more a part of the world/nature. You got one each level, with the tier of drift you could take being half your Geomancer level (rounded up). So the first two levels were basically just weird visual things (I think I started to have vines for hair and like… Tiger stripes or something) but once you get to level 3 and the tier 2 and you’re getting minor benefits like hawk sight so you get a racial +8 or something on spot checks during the day.
By the end of the prestige class I had a pair of natural claw attacks, chameleon skin for a bonus on hide/move silently, ex. wings with a flight speed, scent, and 10 ft. Blindsense among other things. The drifts were permanent mutations of your body, so all of their benefits were extraordinary instead of magical.
Infused meanwhile was more a Paladin/Cleric focused prestige class, but you didn’t have to have levels in those to qualify. Basically there were two versions of the Infused Prestige class, one where you had full base attack, and one where you had cleric attack growth but gained new spells known/per day every other level. Whole point of the Infused was they were a ‘special kind of divine champion against evil’. You picked a specific good outsider that shared your alignment (I think mine was a Ghaele Eladrin? The CG kind with bows basically) and basically your character ended up voluntarily sharing their body and combining souls with that kind of good outsider. So you gained more of their abilities as you leveled, but if you acted counter to their alignment or the personal code/behaviors of that outsider you wouldn’t just lose abilities like a paladin, you’d also be actively nauseated until you fixed things as the outsider and your soul had a slap fight over your body and trying to tear eachother apart. I never got to far in that but it was cool/fun/thematic at the very least.
As for how the whole ‘defeated a red dragon thing’ happened… That… That honestly was mostly just the Warlock stuff, a magic item, the Endurance feat from Ranger. Basically I had the Invocations so that my Eldritch Blast had a) a stupid huge range, b) ignored SR, and c) did a damage the Red Dragon wasn’t immune to. The initial stuff was mostly dog fighting, blasting at it, and doing my best to lure it away from the settlement without getting completely shredded. What I had was… I think I remember it being an Anklet of Translocation. Basically I could ready an action to teleport 10 ft., and apparently either it’s use was unlimited or I had an unlimited use epic version (I did mention I was over lvl 20 when this fight happened, right?). Finally what I had was the Flee The Scene Invocation, which let me Dimension Door as the spell.
Basically the dragon and I got into a situation where I could ready an action to teleport out of range if it rounded on me for a breath weapon or flyby attack, but if it didn’t try to attack me I could just use my Eldritch Blast to attack it as it does. I hadn’t realized this was such a concern because his health was so low. So we ended up playing cat & mouse, with me constantly readying actions to teleport whenever the dragon got close and dimension dooring as far as I could so it would have to waste a round wheeling around, and it couldn’t afford to disengage because I’d shoot it to death, while I couldn’t shoot, because until it started fleeing I had to ready an action to teleport each round. The dm and I ran three rounds of this before we realized we’d stalemated each other and we started looking up the rules for exhaustion to see how long we could each maintain this before exhaustion took our characters out. At that point, I’ve already mentioned the Endurance feat. It started taking non-lethal before me, and it collapsed and I finished it.
Heh. Silly dragon fight. No magic sword or epic spell is mightier than THE RULE BOOK!
One word: Abserd.
Some good discussion on the topic on this one: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/vampire-werewolf
I did once have my rogue multiclass into wizard… but this was in a party where every other character was an arcane or divine caster of some description, so training was easy to justify… I’d been hanging out with a pair of wizards for several years, afterall…
You’d think they would get better at sneaking. :/
Ahh, multiclassing. One of my biggest peeves as both GM and Player. Occasionally, it is done well. Mostly, it seems to be done to stack abilities than compliment each other well. I try to discourage multiclassing among my player, unless on the rare occasions when a player’s interaction with the plot makes is plausible.
For example, a player saved the party from a vengeful (and somewhat lonely and forgotten) deity by swearing to be their priestess for the rest of their days. They then dutifully changed class to Cleric with the next level.
That, I liked as DM. But “I want to take levels of warlock so I can get some spell slots back on a short rest”? That’s just asking me to do horrible things to you, you filthy munchkin.
I don’t mind multiclassing. I don’t mind powergaming. But players expecting the treat class selection as a suite of powers rather than a narrative situation is not fun.
If you’re dipping into warlock, you better believer there’s going to be some patron shenanigans afoot.
This is one of the things I really like about PF2. A lot of the time I want to play a character who is mainly one class but with just a touch of another, and the Dedication feats are perfect for that. For example, my current PFS character is a paladin with the sorcerous dedication, because his backstory involved his mother being Tienese and I liked the idea of him having magical ancestry way back. Plus I find that a little spell access goes a long way in terms of making a character interesting.
Another character I’m considering for a different potential campaign is a human wizard whose primary goal is to find out what happened to Aroden and to learn more about the Starstone, and I’m thinking of having him pick up clerical dedications later on to represent his research into divine magic.
In PF1 I have a character who is a haunt collector occultist with one level of ghost rider cavalier and 1 level of paladin. He’s a devotee of Tsukiyo, the lawful good deity of darkness, madness, and death. No, REALLY. It’s fantastic.
I love the multiclassing, because it gets me exactly what I want.
I get to have a samurai skeleton that I summon, one who seeks to redeem himself for betraying his oath in life. The ghost horse I summon is the samurai’s faithful mount who bore his body back to the temple. Oddly enough, the level of paladin is mainly so I could write his paladin code.
This is the same way that I often get tempted to dip a level of oracle, less for the mystery than for the really intriguing curse!
I know this feel. It’s got to the point where I feel like I’m being uncreative if I go for a single-class build.